An autumnal morn I come to find, Some lovely folk have been very kind. A box on my desk! Who left this behind? A curious thing. I suppose to me this box was assigned, But what was within?With a pen I opened it, like a vault, And claimed the contents within by default. Sweeties and whisky, could not find a fault, My, what a feastie. Here sat Douglas Laing's newest blended malt, Timorous Beastie!

Back in December I visited the Worship Street Whistling Shop for a very special, two hour long ‘multi-sensory experience’: the final Diageo Whisky Theatre of the year. The project is the work of irrepressible Diageo brand ambassador Colin Dunn and the Fluid Movement duo of Tristan Stephenson and Tom Aske who have presented similar experiences in the past, for example with rum, but the mention of whisky certainly caught our attention immediately! I believe Tristan also has a whisky book coming out this year too – one to watch out for.

There is (just) room for nine people but I was joined by a fab four of Gin Monkey, Imbibe’s Laura Foster (recent winner of the Alan Lodge Young International Spirits Writer of the Year), Siobhan Payne from Difford’s Guide and London Cocktail Week and Alex Kratena off of The Artesian (named The World’s Best Bar for the second year running in 2013).

Ever been stuck behind a tractor on a narrow road on Islay? Or anywhere else for that matter? Ardbeg, it seems, have created the perfect solution...

With a little help from automobile whizz extraordinaire Paul Burnham, Ardbeg have succeeded in turning a reliable farmer’s best friend (the sort of indestructible behemoth you could leave rusting in a field for a decade and it would still start up first time) into a shiny chrome-clad hot rod! In fact, as you can see in the video below, their 1950s Massey Ferguson tractor can now show Formula 1 cars from the following decade who's boss!

It consists mainly of Alan Partridge and Father Ted episodes, cocktail recipes, and rain-man-esque recall of horsepower and torque figures for most production cars. There’s also usually something in there about whisky.

What I can tell you about the brain of Ben though, is that these Boutique-y whiskies have recently been upgraded from ‘a bit of fun’, to ‘something with a lot of potential’.

Because of this, you’re going to see a pretty decent number of new releases from brand spanking new distilleries over the next few weeks / months, and if the results of some of the recent whisky auctions are anything to go by, I think we’ll see them selling out in pretty short order.